50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION.
50 years of dispossession.
50 years of forced evictions, demolitions and forcible transfer.
50 years of arbitrary arrests, detention and unfair trials.
50 years of unlawful killings. 50 years of human rights violations and war crimes.
Join our campaign, marking the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip; and call on Canada to prevent the import of settlement goods, and to stop Canadian businesses from operating in, Israel’s illegal settlements.
Entire Palestinian communities have been displaced by these settlements. Their homes and livelihoods have been destroyed, they have had restrictions enforced on their movement, access to their own water, land or and other natural resources. The communities are frequently and violently attacked by the Israeli military and settlers.
The vast majority of states, including Canada, have officially condemned the settlements as illegal under international law. However, over the years, Israeli and international businesses have enabled and facilitated settlement construction and expansion. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods produced in Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land are exported internationally each year.
Over decades, multiple UN resolutions have confirmed that Israeli settlements violate international law. In December 2016 the UN Security council passed a resolution calling on Israel to cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The resolution also called on all states to distinguish in all their dealings between the state of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.
Despite this, Israel has accelerated its expansion and support of settlements.
Stopping businesses from operating in the settlements, and ending the import of settlement goods would convert the international consensus on the illegality of settlements in occupied territory into meaningful action.
By allowing settlement goods, which sustain settlements, into Canadian markets, Canada is conferring implicit recognition on the illegal creation of the settlements from which these goods originate. Canada is also providing assistance to the illegal settlement project and is contributing to the maintenance of the settlement economy, which helps finance the continued existence and expansion of illegal settlements. States must ensure respect for the Geneva Conventions and ensure that they do not recognize as lawful the illegal situation of settlements, nor render them assistance including the means to sustain themselves.
In March 2016 the UN Human Rights Council mandated the creation of a database on business activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The database is to list corporate actors that have directly or indirectly enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements.
Amnesty supports the database and calls on OHCHR and States to ensure that its framework and working procedures are transparent, and that the elaboration of such procedures is done in consultation with civil society and human rights defenders. We further call on States to utilize and engage constructively with the database following its release.
The illegal Israeli settlement enterprise, its industry and infrastructure are a main driving force behind serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Canada must take concrete action to stop the financing of settlements which flagrantly violate international law and constitute war crimes.
